Arcadia Ireland

What a title, eh? But believe it or not, 'The Beast From the East' is what the most recent storm to hit Ireland has been dubbed. Not only the beast, but it was joined by the lovely Storm Emma just to keep things exciting. Now, I won't lie, if you're from somewhere that's used to metres upon metres of snow and insanely cold temperatures then you will think that the 'Beast' is a bit of a joke, but, believe me, we are not used to this and when the beast left it's mark, Ireland went a little bit mad. 

By March, we usually have lovely daffodils and snow drops blossoming everywhere in the spring sun so when Met Eireann (our weather forecasters) told us that we were going to have the worst snow fall since 1982, everyone kind of freaked out. Social media was hopping and you know what the talk of the town was? Bread. Shops literally could not keep it on the shelves. From Monday onward people were buying enough bread to last them a month in the fear that electricity would go and so nothing could be cooked. Next to go was milk, if there's no tea or cereal, then you basically can't survive. People were buying in bulk and the chaos was nothing short of hilarious. 

As the snow arrived (a day early, by the way) the country came to a standstill. I am sitting here in my sitting room writing this (it's now Friday, the first bad snow was on Wednesday) because there is no public transport in operation and all offices and businesses were strongly urged to close. Ireland was brought to an absolute halt and we aren't looking like we will be moving for a while. Flights in and out have been cancelled until tomorrow at the earliest and there are cars splattered all over the roads unable to move and having been abandoned. 

Thankfully there have been no casualties due to the Beast yet, and we sure hope it stays like that. For now, we are all staying inside (except for the occasional cold burst for a snowman or two) and everyone is hoping that things will be back to normal by the weekend.